MARK GRIFFITH
is professor of classics and of theater, dance, and performance studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
is professor of ancient Greek at the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa and a visiting member of the Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
GLENN W. MOST
DAVID GRENE
(1913–2002) taught classics for many years at the University of Chicago.
(1906–1984), professor of Greek at Bryn Mawr College, was a poet and translator best known for his
translations of the Greek classics, especially his versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
RICHMOND LATTIMORE
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by The University of Chicago
The Cyclops © 1952, 2013 by The University of Chicago
Rhesus, Iphigenia in Aulis © 1958, 2013 by The University of Chicago
The Bacchae © 1959, 2013 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
12345
ISBN-13:
ISBN-13:
ISBN-13:
978-0-226-30897-5 (cloth)
978-0-226-30898-2 (paper)
978-0-226-30933-0 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30897-9 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30898-7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-30933-9 (e-book)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Data
Euripides.
[Works. English. 2012]
Euripides. — Third edition.
volumes cm. — (The complete Greek tragedies)
ISBN 978-0-226-30879-1 (v. 1 : cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-30879-0 (v. 1 : cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-30880-7 (v.
1 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-30880-4 (v. 1 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-30934-7 (v. 1 : e-book) — ISBN 0-22630934-7 (v. 1 : e-book) — ISBN 978-0-226-30877-7 (v. 2 : cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-30877-4 (v. 2 : cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-226-30878-4 (v. 2 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN-10: 0-226-30878-2 (v. 2 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-30935-4 (v.
2 : e-book) — ISBN-10: 0-226-30935-5 (v. 2 : e-book) — ISBN 978-0-226-30881-4 (v. 3 : cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-30881-2
(v. 3 : cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-226-30882-1 (v. 3 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-226-30882-0 (v. 3 : pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN
978-0-226-30936-1 (v. 3 : e-book) — ISBN 0-226-30936-3 (v. 3 : e-book)
1. Euripides—Translations into English. 2. Mythology, Greek—Drama. I. Lattimore, Richmond Alexander, 1906–1984. II. Taplin,
Oliver. III. Griffith, Mark, Ph.D. IV. Grene, David. V. Roberts, Deborah H. VI. Arrowsmith, William, 1924–1992. VII. Jones, Frank
William Oliver, 1915–. VIII. Vermeule, Emily. IX. Carson, Anne, 1950–. X. Willetts, R. F. (Ronald Frederick), 1915–1999. XI.
Euripides. Alcestis. English. XII. Title. XIII. Series: Complete Greek tragedies (Unnumbered)
PA3975.A1 2012
882′.01—dc23
2012015831
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper)
THE COMPLETE GREEK TRAGEDIES
Edited by David Grene & Richmond Lattimore
THIRD EDITION
Edited by Mark Griffith & Glenn W. Most
EURIPIDES V
THE BACCHAE
Translated by William Arrowsmith
IPHIGENIA IN AULIS
THE CYCLOPS
RHESUS
Translated by Charles R. Walker
Translated by William Arrowsmith
Translated by Richmond Lattimore
The University of Chicago Press CHICAGO & LONDON
CONTENTS
Editors’ Preface to the Third Edition
Introduction to Euripides
How the Plays Were Originally Staged
THE BACCHAE
Appendix to The Bacchae
IPHIGENIA IN AULIS
Appendix to Iphigenia in Aulis
THE CYCLOPS
RHESUS
Textual Notes
Glossary
EDITORS’ PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
The first edition of the Complete Greek Tragedies , edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore,
was published by the University of Chicago Press starting in 1953. But the origins of the series go
back even further. David Grene had already published his translation of three of the tragedies with the
same press in 1942, and some of the other translations that eventually formed part of the Chicago
series had appeared even earlier. A second edition of the series, with new translations of several plays
and other changes, was published in 1991. For well over six decades, these translations have proved to
be extraordinarily popular and resilient, thanks to their combination of accuracy, poetic immediacy,
and clarity of presentation. They have guided hundreds of thousands of teachers, students, and other
readers toward a reliable understanding of the surviving masterpieces of the three great Athenian
tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.
But the world changes, perhaps never more rapidly than in the past half century, and whatever
outlasts the day of its appearance must eventually come to terms with circumstances very different
from those that prevailed at its inception. During this same period, scholarly understanding of Greek
tragedy has undergone significant development, and there have been marked changes, not only in the
readers to whom this series is addressed, but also in the ways in which these texts are taught and
studied in universities. These changes have prompted the University of Chicago Press to perform
another, more systematic revision of the translations, and we are honored to have been entrusted with
this delicate and important task.
Our aim in this third edition has been to preserve and strengthen as far as possible all those
features that have made the Chicago translations successful for such a long time, while at the same
time revising the texts carefully and tactfully to bring them up to date and equipping them with
various kinds of subsidiary help, so they may continue to serve new generations of readers.
Our revisions have addressed the following issues:
Wherever possible, we have kept the existing translations. But we have revised them where we
found this to be necessary in order to bring them closer to the ancient Greek of the original texts
or to replace an English idiom that has by now become antiquated or obscure. At the same time,
we have done our utmost to respect the original translator’s individual style and meter.
In a few cases, we have decided to substitute entirely new translations for the ones that were
published in earlier editions of the series. Euripides’ Medea has been newly translated by Oliver
Taplin, The Children of Heracles by Mark Griffith, Andromache by Deborah Roberts, and
Iphigenia among the Taurians by Anne Carson. We have also, in the case of Aeschylus, added
translations and brief discussions of the fragments of lost plays that originally belonged to
connected tetralogies along with the surviving tragedies, since awareness of these other lost plays
is oft en crucial to the interpretation of the surviving ones. And in the case of Sophocles, we have
included a translation of the substantial fragmentary remains of one of his satyr-dramas, The
Trackers (Ichneutai). (See “How the Plays Were Originally Staged” below for explanation of
“tetralogy,” “satyr-drama,” and other terms.)
We have altered the distribution of the plays among the various volumes in order to reflect the
chronological order in which they were written, when this is known or can be estimated with
some probability. Thus the Oresteia appears now as volume 2 of Aeschylus’ tragedies, and the
sequence of Euripides’ plays has been rearranged.
We have rewritten the stage directions to make them more consistent throughout, keeping in
mind current scholarly understanding of how Greek tragedies were staged in the fifth century
BCE. In general, we have refrained from extensive stage directions of an interpretive kind, since
these are necessarily speculative and modern scholars often disagree greatly about them. The
Greek manuscripts themselves contain no stage directions at all.
We have indicated certain fundamental differences in the meters and modes of delivery of all the
verse of these plays. Spoken language (a kind of heightened ordinary speech, usually in the
iambic trimeter rhythm) in which the characters of tragedy regularly engage in dialogue and
monologue is printed in ordinary Roman font; the sung verse of choral and individual lyric odes
(using a large variety of different meters), and the chanted verse recited by the chorus or
individual characters (always using the anapestic meter), are rendered in italics, with parentheses
added where necessary to indicate whether the passage is sung or chanted. In this way, readers
will be able to tell at a glance how the playwright intended a given passage to be delivered in the
theater, and how these shifting dynamics of poetic register contribute to the overall dramatic
effect.
All the Greek tragedies that survive alternate scenes of action or dialogue, in which individual
actors speak all the lines, with formal songs performed by the chorus. Occasionally individual
characters sing formal songs too, or they and the chorus may alternate lyrics and spoken verse
within the same scene. Most of the formal songs are structured as a series of pairs of stanzas of
which the metrical form of the first one (“strophe”) is repeated exactly by a second one
(“antistrophe”). Thus the metrical structure will be, e.g., strophe A, antistrophe A, strophe B,
antistrophe B, with each pair of stanzas consisting of a different sequence of rhythms.
Occasionally a short stanza in a different metrical form (“mesode”) is inserted in the middle
between one strophe and the corresponding antistrophe, and sometimes the end of the whole
series is marked with a single stanza in a different metrical form (“epode”)—thus, e.g., strophe
A, mesode, antistrophe A; or strophe A, antistrophe A, strophe B, antistrophe B, epode. We have
indicated these metrical structures by inserting the terms STROPHE, ANTISTROPHE, MESODE, and
EPODE above the first line of the relevant stanzas so that readers can easily recognize the
compositional structure of these songs.
In each play we have indicated by the symbol ° those lines or words for which there are
significant uncertainties regarding the transmitted text, and we have explained as simply as
possible in textual notes at the end of the volume just what the nature and degree of those
uncertainties are. These notes are not at all intended to provide anything like a full scholarly
apparatus of textual variants, but instead to make readers aware of places where the text
transmitted by the manuscripts may not exactly reflect the poet’s own words, or where the
interpretation of those words is seriously in doubt.
For each play we have provided a brief introduction that gives essential information about the
first production of the tragedy, the mythical or historical background of its plot, and its reception
in antiquity and thereafter.
For each of the three great tragedians we have provided an introduction to his life and work. It is
reproduced at the beginning of each volume containing his tragedies.
We have also provided at the end of each volume a glossary explaining the names of all persons
and geographical features that are mentioned in any of the plays in that volume.
It is our hope that our work will help ensure that these translations continue to delight, to move, to
astonish, to disturb, and to instruct many new readers in coming generations.
Berkeley
GLENN W. MOST, Florence
MARK GRIFFITH,
INTRODUCTION TO EURIPIDES
Little is known about the life of Euripides. He was probably born between 485 and 480 BCE on the
island of Salamis near Athens. Of the three great writers of Athenian tragedy of the fifth century he
was thus the youngest: Aeschylus was older by about forty years, Sophocles by ten or fifteen.
Euripides is not reported to have ever engaged significantly in the political or military life of his city,
unlike Aeschylus, who fought against the Persians at Marathon, and Sophocles, who was made a
general during the Peloponnesian War. In 408 Euripides left Athens to go to the court of King
Archelaus of Macedonia in Pella (we do not know exactly why). He died there in 406.
Ancient scholars knew of about ninety plays attributed to Euripides, and he was given permission
to participate in the annual tragedy competition at the festival of Dionysus on twenty-two occasions—
strong evidence of popular interest in his work. But he was not particularly successful at winning the
first prize. Although he began competing in 455 (the year after Aeschylus died), he did not win first
place until 441, and during his lifetime he received that award only four times; a fifth victory was
bestowed on him posthumously for his trilogy Iphigenia in Aulis, Bacchae, Alcmaeon in Corinth (this
last play is lost), produced by one of his sons who was also named Euripides. By contrast, Aeschylus
won thirteen victories and Sophocles eighteen. From various references, especially the frequent
parodies of Euripides in the comedies of Aristophanes, we can surmise that many members of
contemporary Athenian audiences objected to Euripides’ tendency to make the characters of tragedy
more modern and less heroic, to represent the passions of women, and to reflect recent developments
in philosophy and music.
But in the centuries after his death, Euripides went on to become by far the most popular of the
Greek tragedians. When the ancient Greeks use the phrase “the poet” without further specification and
do not mean by it Homer, they always mean Euripides. Hundreds of fragments from his plays, mostly
quite short, are found in quotations by other authors and in anthologies from the period between the
third century BCE and the fourth century CE. Many more fragments of his plays have been preserved on
papyrus starting in the fourth century BCE than of those by Aeschylus and Sophocles together, and far
more scenes of his plays have been associated with images on ancient pottery starting in the same
century and on frescoes in Pompeii and elsewhere and Roman sarcophagi some centuries later than is
the case for either of his rivals. Some knowledge of his texts spread far and wide through collections
of sententious aphorisms and excerpts of speeches and songs drawn from his plays (or invented in his
name).
It was above all in the schools that Euripides became the most important author of tragedies:
children throughout the Greek-speaking world learned the rules of language and comportment by
studying first and foremost Homer and Euripides. But we know that Euripides’ plays also continued to
be performed in theaters for centuries, and the transmitted texts of some of the more popular ones
(e.g., Medea, Orestes) seem to bear the traces of modifications by ancient producers and actors. Both
in his specific plays and plots and in his general conception of dramatic action and character,
Euripides massively influenced later Greek playwrights, not only tragic poets but also comic ones
(especially Menander, the most important dramatist of New Comedy, born about a century and a half
after Euripides)—and not only Greek ones, but Latin ones as well, such as Accius and Pacuvius, and
later Seneca (who went on to exert a deep influence on Renaissance drama).
A more or less complete collection of his plays was made in Alexandria during the third century
BCE. Whereas, out of all the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, only seven tragedies each were chosen
(no one knows by whom) at some point later in antiquity, probably in the second century CE, to
represent their work, Euripides received the distinction of having ten plays selected as canonical:
Alcestis, Andromache, Bacchae, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Medea, Orestes, The Phoenician Women, Rhesus
(scholars generally think this play was written by someone other than Euripides and was attributed to
him in antiquity by mistake), and The Trojan Women . Of these ten tragedies, three—Hecuba, Orestes,
and The Phoenician Women —were especially popular in the Middle Ages; they are referred to as the
Byzantine triad, after the capital of the eastern Empire, Byzantium, known later as Constantinople and
today as Istanbul.
The plays that did not form part of the selection gradually ceased to be copied, and thus most of
them eventually were lost to posterity. We would possess only these ten plays and fragments of the
others were it not for the lucky chance that a single volume of an ancient complete edition of
Euripides’ plays, arranged alphabetically, managed to survive into the Middle Ages. Thus we also
have another nine tragedies (referred to as the alphabetic plays) whose titles in Greek all begin with
the letters epsilon, êta, iota, and kappa: Electra, Helen, The Children of Heracles (Hêrakleidai),
Heracles, The Suppliants (Hiketides), Ion, Iphigenia in Aulis, Iphigenia among the Taurians , and The
Cyclops (Kyklôps). The Byzantine triad have very full ancient commentaries (scholia) and are
transmitted by hundreds of medieval manuscripts; the other seven plays of the canonical selection
have much sparser scholia and are transmitted by something more than a dozen manuscripts; the
alphabetic plays have no scholia at all and are transmitted only by a single manuscript in rather poor
condition and by its copies.
Modern scholars have been able to establish a fairly secure dating for most of Euripides’ tragedies
thanks to the exact indications provided by ancient scholarship for the first production of some of
them and the relative chronology suggested by metrical and other features for the others. Accordingly
the five volumes of this third edition have been organized according to the probable chronological
sequence:
Volume 1:
Volume 2:
Volume 3:
Volume 4:
Volume 5:
Alcestis: 438 BCE
Medea: 431
The Children of Heracles: ca. 430
Hippolytus: 428
Andromache: ca. 425
Hecuba: ca. 424
The Suppliant Women: ca. 423
Electra: ca. 420
Heracles: ca. 415
The Trojan Women: 415
Iphigenia among the Taurians: ca. 414
Ion: ca. 413
Helen: 412
The Phoenician Women: ca. 409
Orestes: 408
Bacchae: posthumously after 406
Iphigenia in Aulis: posthumously after 406
The Cyclops: date unknown
Rhesus: probably spurious, from the fourth century BCE
In the Renaissance Euripides remained the most popular of the three tragedians. Directly and by
the mediation of Seneca he influenced drama from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century far more
than Aeschylus or Sophocles did. But toward the end of the eighteenth century and even more in the
course of the nineteenth century, he came increasingly under attack yet again, as already in the fifth
century BCE, and for much the same reason, as being decadent, tawdry, irreligious, and inharmonious.
He was also criticized for his perceived departures from the ideal of “the tragic” (as exemplified by
plays such as Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Antigone), especially in the “romance” plots of
Alcestis, Iphigenia among the Taurians, Ion, and Helen. It was left to the twentieth century to discover
its own somewhat disturbing affinity to his tragic style and worldview. Nowadays among theatrical
audiences, scholars, and nonprofessional readers Euripides is once again at least as popular as his two
rivals.
HOW THE PLAYS WERE ORIGINALLY STAGED
Nearly all the plays composed by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were first performed in the
Theater of Dionysus at Athens, as part of the annual festival and competition in drama. This was not
only a literary and musical event, but also an important religious and political ceremony for the
Athenian community. Each year three tragedians were selected to compete, with each of them
presenting four plays per day, a “tetralogy” of three tragedies and one satyr-play. The satyr-play was a
type of drama similar to tragedy in being based on heroic myth and employing many of the same
stylistic features, but distinguished by having a chorus of half-human, half-horse followers of
Dionysus—sileni or satyrs—and by always ending happily. Extant examples of this genre are
Euripides’ The Cyclops (in Euripides, vol. 5) and Sophocles’ The Trackers (partially preserved: in
Sophocles, vol. 2).
The three competing tragedians were ranked by a panel of citizens functioning as amateur judges,
and the winner received an honorific prize. Records of these competitions were maintained, allowing
Aristotle and others later to compile lists of the dates when each of Aeschylus’, Sophocles’, and
Euripides’ plays were first performed and whether they placed first, second, or third in the
competition (unfortunately we no longer possess the complete lists).
The tragedians competed on equal terms: each had at his disposal three actors (only two in
Aeschylus’ and Euripides’ earliest plays) who would often have to switch between roles as each play
progressed, plus other nonspeaking actors to play attendants and other subsidiary characters; a chorus
of twelve (in Aeschylus’ time) or fifteen (for most of the careers of Sophocles and Euripides), who
would sing and dance formal songs and whose Chorus Leader would engage in dialogue with the
characters or offer comment on the action; and a pipe-player, to accompany the sung portions of the
play.
All the performers were men, and the actors and chorus members all wore masks. The association
of masks with other Dionysian rituals may have affected their use in the theater; but masks had certain
practical advantages as well—for example, making it easy to play female characters and to change
quickly between roles. In general, the use of masks also meant that ancient acting techniques must
have been rather different from what we are used to seeing in the modern theater. Acting in a mask
requires a more frontal and presentational style of performance toward the audience than is usual with
unmasked, “realistic” acting; a masked actor must communicate far more by voice and stylized bodily
gesture than by facial expression, and the gradual development of a character in the course of a play
could hardly be indicated by changes in his or her mask. Unfortunately, however, we know almost
nothing about the acting techniques of the Athenian theater. But we do know that the chorus members
were all Athenian amateurs, and so were the actors up until the later part of the fifth century, by which
point a prize for the best actor had been instituted in the tragic competition, and the art of acting
(which of course included solo singing and dancing) was becoming increasingly professionalized.
The tragedian himself not only wrote the words for his play but also composed the music and
choreography and directed the productions. It was said that Aeschylus also acted in his plays but that
Sophocles chose not to, except early in his career, because his voice was too weak. Euripides is
reported to have had a collaborator who specialized in musical composition. The costs for each
playwright’s production were shared between an individual wealthy citizen, as a kind of “super-tax”
requirement, and the city.
The Theater of Dionysus itself during most of the fifth century BCE probably consisted of a large
rectangular or trapezoidal dance floor, backed by a one-story wooden building (the skênê), with a large
central door that opened onto the dance floor. (Some scholars have argued that two doors were used,
but the evidence is thin.) Between the skênê and the dance floor there may have been a narrow stage
on which the characters acted and which communicated easily with the dance floor. For any particular
play, the skênê might represent a palace, a house, a temple, or a cave, for example; the interior of this
“building” was generally invisible to the audience, with all the action staged in front of it. Sophocles
is said to have been the first to use painted scenery; this must have been fairly simple and easy to
remove, as every play had a different setting. Playwrights did not include stage directions in their
texts. Instead, a play’s setting was indicated explicitly by the speaking characters.
All the plays were performed in the open air and in daylight. Spectators sat on wooden seats in
rows, probably arranged in rectangular blocks along the curving slope of the Acropolis. (The stone
semicircular remains of the Theater of Dionysus that are visible today in Athens belong to a later era.)
Seating capacity seems to have been four to six thousand—thus a mass audience, but not quite on the
scale of the theaters that came to be built during the fourth century BCE and later at Epidaurus,
Ephesus, and many other locations all over the Mediterranean.
Alongside the skênê, on each side, there were passages through which actors could enter and exit.
The acting area included the dance floor, the doorway, and the area immediately in front of the skênê.
Occasionally an actor appeared on the roof or above it, as if flying. He was actually hanging from a
crane (mêchanê: hence deus ex machina, “a god from the machine”). The skênê was also occasionally
opened up—the mechanical details are uncertain—in order to show the audience what was concealed
within (usually dead bodies). Announcements of entrances and exits, like the setting, were made by
the characters. Although the medieval manuscripts of the surviving plays do not provide explicit stage
directions, it is usually possible to infer from the words or from the context whether a particular
entrance or exit is being made through a door (into the skênê) or by one of the side entrances. In later
antiquity, there may have been a rule that one side entrance always led to the city center, the other to
the countryside or harbor. Whether such a rule was ever observed in the fifth century is uncertain.
THE BACCHAE
Translated by WILLIAM ARROWSMITH
THE BACCHAE: INTRODUCTION
The Play: Date and Composition
Euripides’ Bacchae was first produced posthumously at the Great Dionysian festival in 405 BCE.
Euripides had left Athens for Macedonia three years earlier and had died there in 406. The Bacchae
was staged in his absence by one of his sons (also named Euripides), together with Iphigenia in Aulis
(preserved) and Alcmaeon in Corinth (lost); this tetralogy won first prize for Euripides after his death,
an award that he had won only four times during his lifetime.
The Myth
Euripides’ Bacchae is the only surviving Greek tragedy to focus on a myth concerning Dionysus
himself (otherwise known as Bacchus, or Bromius), the god of wine and theater in whose honor all
these tragedies were performed. This play dramatizes Dionysus’ establishment of his first cult in
Greece, in the city of Thebes; it quickly became the classic version of the story. Dionysus had been
conceived in Thebes as the son of Zeus by Cadmus’ daughter, the mortal woman Semele, but she had
been blasted by the god’s thunderbolt before she could give birth to the child. The unborn infant
Dionysus was rescued by Zeus, and in due course was born from Zeus’ thigh; then after growing up he
proceeded triumphantly throughout much of Asia, introducing his rites among the various peoples
there. Now, accompanied by Asian bacchants, he has returned to Thebes, where the original ruler,
Cadmus, has abdicated in favor of his grandson Pentheus. Semele’s sisters, including Pentheus’
mother, Agave, are denying her claim that Dionysus was the fruit of her union with a god, and
Dionysus has punished them by driving all the women of Thebes mad and sending them in a frenzy
out from the city onto the nearby mountain Cithaeron.
It is at this point that the action of the play begins. Dionysus, disguised as a mortal priest of his
cult, sets the scene and introduces the action; only the audience knows his true identity. First the Asian
bacchants (the chorus) arrive, and then Cadmus and Teiresias, all of them dedicated in different ways
to celebrating this new god’s worship. Pentheus rushes in, agitated at the news of the foreigner’s
arrival, and proceeds to do all he can to suppress the new cult and its representatives, even attempting
to lock up the stranger (the disguised Dionysus) in prison and to capture the Theban bacchants on the
mountainside. His efforts fail humiliatingly, yet he still cannot recognize the reality of Dionysus’
power, despite being fascinated with the women’s activities on Cithaeron. Eventually, at Dionysus’
suggestion, Pentheus agrees to disguise himself as a bacchant himself and to go spy upon them. There
he ends up being torn to pieces by Agave and the others, who in their crazed state mistake him for a
lion. As the play comes to a close, Agave comes to realize what she has done. She and her father,
Cadmus, go into exile, in misery, and Dionysus proclaims his future worship throughout Greece.
As early as Homer’s Iliad, various myths told of the establishment of cults of Dionysus despite
bitter human resistance, and of the god’s bloody vengeance upon such unbelievers as Pentheus and the
Thracian king Lycurgus. Scholars disagree about whether, and if so to what extent, the very earliest
Athenian tragedies represented legends involving Dionysus himself. But it is certain that such myths
had sometimes been presented in tragedies, now lost, by a number of playwrights before Euripides.
Aeschylus composed two tetralogies on Dionysiac themes, a Lycurgeia (comprising Edonians,
Bassarai [a term for Thracian bacchants], Youths, and the satyr-play Lycurgus) and a Theban tetralogy
(including probably Semele, Wool-Carders, Pentheus , and the satyr-play Nurses). Lesser known
tragedians wrote other plays on the subject: Polyphrasmon a tetralogy on Lycurgus, Xenocles a
Bacchae, Sophocles’ son Iophon a Bacchae or Pentheus, Spintharos a Lightning-Struck Semele,
Cleophon a Bacchae; and, probably later than Euripides, Chaeremon wrote a Dionysus, Carcinus a
Semele, and Diogenes too a Semele. Little or nothing is known about most of these plays, but when
fragments or reports have survived, they usually indicate striking affinities with Euripides’ play. In
particular, the fragments of Aeschylus’ Lycurgeia show an effeminate Dionysus being captured and
interrogated, the bacchants being imprisoned and miraculously escaping, and the house shaking in a
bacchic frenzy. So at least in its general outline and in some of its incidents Euripides’ play will not
have seemed entirely unusual to its first audience, though some scenes—perhaps especially Teiresias’
sophistic lecture on Dionysian religion and the whole gruesome episode of Agave—are likely to have
been surprising Euripidean innovations.
What is Euripides’ own attitude to the story and characters he has dramatized in The Bacchae? Is
this play his final declaration of faith in traditional Greek religion, a recantation of the notorious
expressions of doubt made by some of the characters in his earlier plays? Or is it a denunciation of the
catastrophes to which religious fanaticism can lead? To what extent may we imagine that elements of
actual Dionysian ritual are being represented in the scenes of dance, cross-dressing, and collective
dismemberment of a victim? Certainly the benefits that Dionysus provides—wine, music, and dance,
as well as temporary release from toil and worry, especially for women, laborers, and the socially
marginalized—are vividly and eloquently presented, both by the chorus and by several characters in
the play. At the same time, the violence and wild behavior of some of the god’s crazed worshippers
are shocking and disturbing. In the end, the play leaves the audience in no doubt as to the disastrous
consequences of rejecting Dionysus, even as it also reminds us of the ambiguous delights—and
dangers—of the altered states, disguises, and transgressions of norms that his worship traditionally
brings and that theater especially thrives on. To what extent does the play explore the crucial but
ambiguous relation of Dionysian drama to politics and the dangers to which a city exposes itself if it
refuses to accept tragedy within its walls? In any case, Euripides’ decision, in self-imposed exile at
the Macedonian court (where tragedy appears by this date to have become almost as popular as in
Athens), to compose this play—perhaps his last completed one—for production at the Great
Dionysian festival back home in Athens raises questions that have always fascinated not only scholars
but also ordinary readers and theatergoers.
Transmission and Reception
The evidence of quotations and allusions among later authors and the survival of at least eight papyri
containing fragments of the play indicate that The Bacchae was quite popular throughout antiquity.
The tragedy is frequently referred to by pagan and Christian writers, and it deeply influenced a
number of later works of Greek literature, especially the Dionysiaca, a forty-eight-book epic on
Dionysus (the longest surviving poem from antiquity) by the early fifth-century CE poet Nonnus, and
The Passion of Christ, an anonymous Byzantine Christian cento (a poem made up entirely of recycled
verses from earlier poetry) which uses many lines from Euripides’ tragedy about the experiences of
Dionysus (as well as verses from other plays, especially by Aeschylus and Euripides) to tell of Jesus’
sufferings and resurrection. So too, in Latin literature Euripides’ play seems to have been a model for
the Roman tragedians Pacuvius for his Pentheus and Accius for his Bacchae (whereas Naevius seems
in his Lycurgus to have gone back to Aeschylus); but unfortunately none of these plays survive.
Directly and indirectly, Euripides’ Bacchae remained a vital presence not only in ancient
schoolrooms but also on ancient stages—one bizarre but striking piece of evidence is an incident at
the Parthian court in 53 BCE when an actor dressed as Agave sang her lines “We bring this branch to
the palace, / this fresh-cut tendril from the mountains . / Happy was the hunting” (1169–71) to general
applause while holding the severed head of the defeated Roman general Crassus. And somewhat over a
century later the emperor Nero may have sung excerpts from the play while accompanying himself on
the kithara. But scholars disagree about whether this tragedy left substantial traces in ancient pictorial
art: a number of vases and frescoes depict the death of Pentheus, and scenes of Dionysiac revelry are
frequent in all forms of ancient art, including sarcophagi, but it is unclear to what extent these are
related directly to Euripides’ play.
The Bacchae seems to have been selected as one of the ten canonical plays most studied and read
in antiquity, but it was probably the very last play in that edition and as a result was more liable to
damage, particularly at its ending. In fact, it is transmitted to us only by one manuscript and its copy;
the former breaks off about halfway through, at line 755, so for the rest of the play we are dependent
upon a single manuscript—and that one has at least one large gap near the end and a couple of smaller
ones. Editors use a combination of different sources—summaries, citations, and allusions from other
authors, verses from The Passion of Christ, and papyri—to try to fill out that large gap, at least
speculatively. Unlike the other plays in the collection of ten, The Bacchae does not have any ancient
or medieval commentaries.
In modern times, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that The Bacchae began to be
regarded as one of the supreme achievements of Greek tragedy, and also as crucial evidence for the
religious significance of Dionysus in antiquity. This development began in Germany, with the poets
Friedrich Hölderlin (who began, but did not complete, a translation of the play in 1799 and composed
a number of poems about Dionysus and Jesus) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who translated the
whole play starting in 1821); and it culminated there in the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose
Birth of Tragedy (1872) conceived of the Dionysian element as a vital counter to the Apollinian one in
ancient Greek and also in contemporary European culture. Thereafter, it is difficult to separate the
influence of Euripides from that of Nietzsche, among such authors as Hugo von Hofmannsthal
(“Pentheus,” 1904: a dramatic sketch), Robinson Jeffers (“The Women on Cythaeron,” 1928, a poem,
later retitled “The Humanist’s Tragedy”), Egon Wellesz ( The Bacchants, 1931, an opera), Martha
Graham (Three Choric Dances for an Antique Greek Tragedy , 1933), W. H. Auden (with Chester
Kallman, the libretto for Hans Werner Henze’s opera The Bassarids, 1966), and Donna Tartt (The
Secret History, 1992, a novel). Starting in the late 1960s, the play was staged ever more frequently as
a celebration of erotic, musical, and hippy vitality, a questioning of traditional masculinity and gender
roles, and a condemnation of prudish censoriousness: the production by Richard Schechner and the
Living Theater, Dionysus in ’69, was a controversial milestone. Other recent notable dramatic
versions include Joe Orton’s The Erpingham Camp (1966), Nigerian author Wole Soyinka’s The
Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (first staged 1973), and Brad Mays’ staging at the Complex
in Los Angeles (1997, filmed 2000). Euripides’ Bacchae continues to be one of the most frequently
produced and read of all Greek tragedies, one of the most popular—and one of the most perplexing.
THE BACCHAE
Characters
DIONYSUS (also called Bacchus, Bromius, Dithyrambus, Euhius, and Iacchus)
CHORUS of Asian Bacchae (female followers of Dionysus, also called Bacchants and maenads)
TEIRESIAS, Theban seer
CADMUS, father of Semele (Dionysus’ mother) and of Agave
PENTHEUS, king of Thebes
ATTENDANT of Pentheus
FIRST MESSENGER, a shepherd
SECOND MESSENGER, a servant of Pentheus
AGAVE, daughter of Cadmus, mother of Pentheus
Scene: Pentheus’ palace at Thebes. In front of it stands the tomb of Semele.
(Enter Dionysus from the side.)
DIONYSUS
5
10
15
I am Dionysus, the son of Zeus,
come back to Thebes, this land where I was born.
My mother was Cadmus’ daughter, Semele by name,
midwived by fire, delivered by the lightning’s
blast.
And here I stand, a god incognito,
disguised as man, beside the stream of Dirce
and the waters of Ismenus. There before the palace
I see my lightning-blasted mother’s grave,
and there upon the ruins of her shattered house
the living fire of Zeus still smolders on
in deathless witness of Hera’s violence and rage
against my mother. But Cadmus wins my praise:
he has made this tomb a shrine, sacred to his daughter.
It was I who screened her grave with the green
of the clustering vine.
Far behind me lie
the gold-rich lands of Lydia and Phrygia,
where my journeying began. Overland I went,
across the steppes of Persia where the sun strikes hotly
down, through Bactrian fastness and the grim waste
of Media. Thence to blessed Arabia I came;
and so, along all Asia’s swarming littoral
of towered cities where barbarians and Greeks,
mingling, live, my progress made. There
20
25
30
I taught my dances to the feet of living men,
establishing my mysteries and rites
that I might be revealed to mortals for what I am:
a god.
And thence to Thebes.
This city, first
in Hellas, now shrills and echoes to my women’s cries,
their ecstasy of joy. Here in Thebes
I bound the fawnskin to the women’s flesh and armed
their hands with shafts of ivy. For I have come
to refute that slander spoken by my mother’s sisters—
those who least had right to slander her.
They said that Dionysus was no son of Zeus,
but Semele had slept beside a man in love
and foisted off her shame on Zeus—a fraud, they sneered,
contrived by Cadmus to protect his daughter’s name.
They said she lied, and Zeus in anger at that lie
blasted her with lightning.
Because of that offense
35
40
45
50
I have stung them with frenzy, hounded them from home
up to the mountains where they wander, crazed of mind,
and compelled them to wear my ritual uniform.
Every woman in Thebes—but the women only—
I drove from home, mad. There they sit,
all of them, together with the daughters of Cadmus,
beneath the silver firs on the roofless rocks.
Like it or not, this city must learn its lesson:
it lacks initiation in my mysteries;
so I shall vindicate my mother Semele
and stand revealed to mortal eyes as the god
she bore to Zeus.
Cadmus the king has abdicated,
leaving his throne and power to his grandson Pentheus,
who revolts against divinity, in me;
thrusts me from his offerings; omits my name
from his prayers. Therefore I shall prove to him
and everyone in Thebes that I am god
indeed. And when my worship is established here,
and all is well, then I shall go my way
and be revealed to other men in other lands.
But if the town of Thebes attempts to force
my Bacchae from the mountainside with weapons,
I shall marshal my maenads and take the field.
To these ends I have laid divinity aside
and go disguised as man.
(Calling toward the side.)
55
On, my women,
women who worship me, women whom I led
out of Asia where Tmolus heaves its rampart
60
over Lydia!
On, comrades of my progress here!
Come, and with your native Phrygian drum—
Rhea’s invention and mine—pound at the doors
of Pentheus’ palace! Let the city of Thebes behold you,
while I myself go to Cithaeron’s glens
where my Bacchae wait, and join their whirling dances.
(Exit Dionysus to one side. Enter the Chorus
of Asian Bacchae from the other.)
CHORUS
65
[singing]
Out of the land of Asia,
down from holy Tmolus,
speeding the god’s service,
for Bromius we come!
Hard are the labors of god;
hard, but his service is sweet.
Sweet to serve, sweet to cry :
Bacchus! Euhoi!
70
You on the streets! You on the roads!
You in the palace! Come out!
Let every mouth be hushed.
Let no ill-omened words
profane your tongues.
For now I shall raise the old, old hymn to Dionysus.
STROPHE A
75
80
85
Blessed, those who know the god’s mysteries,°
happy those who sanctify their lives,
whose souls are initiated into the holy company,
dancing on the mountains the holy dance of the god,
and those who keep the rites of Cybele the Mother,
and who shake the thyrsus,
who wear the crown of ivy.
Dionysus is their god!
On, Bacchae, on, you Bacchae,
bring the god, son of god,
bring Bromius home,
from Phrygian mountains,
to the broad streets of Hellas—Bromius!
ANTISTROPHE A
90
95
His mother bore him once in labor bitter;
lightning-struck, forced by fire that flared from Zeus,
consumed, she died, untimely torn,
in childbed dead by blow of light!
Zeus it was who saved his son,
swiftly bore him to a private place,
concealed his son from Hera’s eyes
100
in his thigh as in a womb,
binding it with clasps of gold.
And when the weaving Fates fulfilled the time,
the bull-horned god was born of Zeus.
He crowned his son with garlands,
wherefrom descends to us the maenad’s writhing crown,
wild creatures in our hair.
STROPHE B
105
110
115
O Thebes, nurse of Semele,
crown your head with ivy!
Grow green with bryony!
Redden with berries! O city,
with boughs of oak and fir,
come dance the dance of god!
Fringe your skins of dappled fawn
with tufts of twisted wool!
Handle with holy care
the violent wand of god!
And at once the whole land shall dance
when Bromius leads the holy company
to the mountain!
to the mountain!
where the throng of women waits,
driven from shuttle and loom,
possessed by Dionysus!
ANTISTROPHE B
120
125
130
And I praise the holies of Crete,
the caves of the dancing Curetes,
there where Zeus was born,
where helmed in triple tier
the Corybantes invented this leather drum.
They were the first of all
whose whirling feet kept time
to the strict beat of the taut hide
and the sweet cry of the Phrygian pipes.
Then from them to Rhea’s hands
the holy drum was handed down,
to give the beat for maenads’ dances;
and, taken up by the raving satyrs,
it now accompanies the dance
which every other year
celebrates your name:
Dionysus!
EPODE
135
He is sweet upon the mountains, when he drops to the earth
from the running packs.
He wears the holy fawnskin. He hunts the wild goat
and kills it.
140
145
150
155
160
165
He delights in raw flesh.
He runs to the mountains of Phrygia, of Lydia,
Bromius, who leads us! Euhoi!
With milk the earth flows! It flows with wine!
It runs with the nectar of bees!
Like frankincense in its fragrance
is the blaze of the torch he bears,
flaming from his trailing fennel wand
as he runs, as he dances,
kindling the stragglers,
spurring with cries,
and his long curls stream to the wind!
And he cries, as they cry,°
“On, Bacchae!
On, Bacchae!
Follow, glory of golden Tmolus,
hymning Dionysus
with a rumble of drums,
with the cry, Euhoi! to the Euhoian god,
with cries in Phrygian melodies,
when the holy pipe like honey plays
the sacred song for those who go
to the mountain!
to the mountain!”
Then, in ecstasy, like a colt by its grazing mother,
the bacchant runs with flying feet, she leaps!
(Enter Teiresias from the side, dressed in the bacchant’s
fawnskin and ivy crown, and carrying a thyrsus.)
TEIRESIAS
Ho there, who keeps the gates?
Summon Cadmus—
170
Cadmus, Agenor’s son, who came from Sidon
and built the towers of our Thebes.
Go, someone.
175
Say Teiresias wants him. He will know what errand
brings me, that agreement, age with age, we made
to deck our wands, to dress in skins of fawn
and crown our heads with ivy.
(Enter Cadmus from the palace, dressed like Teiresias.)
CADMUS
My old friend,
I knew it must be you when I heard your summons.
For there’s a wisdom in his voice that makes
the man of wisdom known.
So here I am,
180
dressed in the costume of the god, prepared to go.
Insofar as we are able, Teiresias, we must
185
do honor to this god, for he was born
my daughter’s son, who has been revealed to men,°
the god, Dionysus.
Where shall we go, where
shall we tread the dance, tossing our white-haired heads
in the dances of the god?
Expound to me, Teiresias,
age to age: for you are wise.
Surely
I could dance night and day, untiringly
beating the earth with my thyrsus! And how sweet it is
to forget my old age.
TEIRESIAS
190
It is the same with me.
I too feel young, young enough to dance.
CADMUS
Good. Shall we not take our chariots to the mountain?
TEIRESIAS
Walking would be better. It shows more honor
to the god.
CADMUS
So be it. I shall lead, my old age
conducting yours.
TEIRESIAS
The god will guide us there
with no effort on our part.
CADMUS
195
Are we the only men
who will dance for Bacchus?
TEIRESIAS
The others are all blind.
Only we can see.
CADMUS
But we delay too long.
Here, take my arm.
TEIRESIAS
Link my hand in yours.
CADMUS
I am a man, nothing more. I do not scoff
at gods.
TEIRESIAS
200
205
We do not trifle with divinity.°
No, we are the heirs of customs and traditions
hallowed by age and handed down to us
by our fathers. No quibbling logic can topple them,
whatever subtleties this clever age invents.
People may say: “Aren’t you ashamed? At your age,
going dancing, wreathing your head with ivy?”
Well, I am not ashamed. Did the god declare
that just the young or just the old should dance?
No, he desires his honor from all mankind.
He wants no one excluded from his worship.
CADMUS
210
Because you cannot see, Teiresias, let me be
interpreter for you this time. Here comes
the man to whom I left my throne, Echion’s son,
Pentheus, hastening toward the palace. He seems
excited and disturbed. What is his news?
(Enter Pentheus from the side.)
PENTHEUS
215
220
225
230
235
240
I happened to be away, out of this land,
but I’ve heard of some strange mischief in the town,
stories of our women leaving home to frisk
in mock ecstasies among the thickets on the mountain,
dancing in honor of the latest divinity,
a certain Dionysus, whoever he may be!
In their midst stand bowls brimming with wine.
And then, one by one, the women wander off
to hidden nooks where they serve the lusts of men.
Priestesses of Bacchus they claim they are,
but it’s really Aphrodite they adore.
I have captured some of them; my jailers
have bound their hands and locked them in our prison.
Those who run at large shall be hunted down
out of the mountains like the animals they are—
yes, my own mother Agave, and Ino
and Autonoë, the mother of Actaeon.
In no time at all I shall have them trapped
in iron nets and stop this obscene disorder.
I am also told a foreigner has come to Thebes
from Lydia, one of those charlatan magicians,
with long yellow curls smelling of perfumes,
with flushed cheeks and the spells of Aphrodite
in his eyes. His days and nights he spends
with women and girls, dangling before them the joys
of initiation in his mysteries.
But let me catch him in this land of mine
and I’ll stop his pounding with his wand and tossing
245
his head. I’ll have his head cut off his body!
And this is the man who claims that Dionysus
is a god and was sewn into the thigh of Zeus,
when, in point of fact, that same blast of lightning
consumed him and his mother both, for her lie
that she had lain with Zeus in love. Whoever
this stranger is, aren’t such impostures,
such unruliness, worthy of hanging?
(He catches sight of Teiresias and Cadmus.)
What!
But this is incredible! Teiresias the seer
tricked out in a dappled fawnskin!
And you,
250
you, my grandfather, playing the bacchant—what a laugh!—
with a fennel wand!
Sir, I shrink to see your old age
so foolish. Shake that ivy off, grandfather!
Now drop that wand. Drop it, I say.
Aha,
255
I see: this is your doing, Teiresias.
Yes, you want still another god revealed to men
so you can pocket the profits from burnt offerings
and bird-watching. By heaven, only your age
restrains me now from sending you to prison
with those Bacchic women for importing here to Thebes
these filthy mysteries. When once you see
the glint of wine shining at the feasts of women,
then you may be sure the festival is rotten.
260
CHORUS LEADER
265
What blasphemy! Stranger, have you no respect
for the gods? For Cadmus who sowed the dragon teeth?
Will the son of Echion disgrace his house?
TEIRESIAS
270
275
Give a wise man an honest brief to plead
and his eloquence is no remarkable achievement.
But you are glib; your phrases come rolling out
smoothly on the tongue, as though your words were wise
instead of foolish. The man whose glibness flows
from his conceit of speech declares the thing he is:
a worthless and a stupid citizen.
I tell you,
this god whom you ridicule shall someday have
enormous power and prestige throughout Hellas.
Mankind, young man, possesses two supreme blessings.
First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth—
whichever name you choose to call her by.
It was she who gave to man his nourishment of dry food.